In a unanimous vote last week, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan to extend its lease with the State Lands Commission through 2035.

The 20-year lease now includes the current and proposed wider, safer bridge, as well as the permanent rock revetment and existing improvements going on at Goleta Beach Park.

It also consolidates four parcels of state-owned tidelands and submerged lands (totaling nearly five acres) into one master lease, revamping a separate-agreement system. Most Goleta Beach Park land was transferred to the county in 1970.

The current bridge, built in the 1970s during the Highway 217 project, will remain open during construction and be demolished after the new one is complete, possibly by the fall of 2016, according to county Public Works Department staff.

Fourth District Supervisor Peter Adam worried that the lease would require the county to eventually dig out rocks — going against a hard-fought battle to keep the rock revetment to protect the beach from erosion — but county counsel clarified the rocks would remain until the lease expired and terms were renegotiated.

Emergency repairs were made to the bridge in 2008, when Caltrans added support to piles suffering from a permanent condition called “reactive aggregate.”

The new bridge will be 20 feet wider, offering enough room for a raised five-foot pedestrian path — currently three feet — adjacent to a 12-foot bicycle path running parallel to, but separate from, northbound traffic.

The bridge is a vital connection for the coastal bike path to UCSB across the slough to the park, which is used by 1 million visitors each year.

Support Noozhawk Today

You are an important ally in our mission to deliver clear, objective, high-quality professional news reporting for Santa Barbara, Goleta and the rest of Santa Barbara County. Join the Hawks Club today to help keep Noozhawk soaring.

We offer four membership levels: $5 a month, $10 a month, $25 a month or $1 a week. Payments can be made through Stripe below, or click here for information on recurring credit-card payments and a mailing address for checks.

Welcome to Noozhawk Asks, a new feature in which you ask the questions, you help decide what Noozhawk investigates, and you work with us to find the answers.

Here’s how it works: You share your questions with us in the nearby box. In some cases, we may work with you to find the answers. In others, we may ask you to vote on your top choices to help us narrow the scope. And we’ll be regularly asking you for your feedback on a specific issue or topic.

We also expect to work together with the reader who asked the winning questions to find the answer together. Noozhawk’s objective is to come at questions from a place of curiosity and openness, and we believe a transparent collaboration is the key to achieve it.

The results of our investigation will be published here in this Noozhawk Asks section. Once or twice a month, we plan to do a review of what was asked and answered.

Reader Comments

Noozhawk is no longer accepting reader comments on our articles. Click here for the announcement. Readers are instead invited to submit letters to the editor by emailing them to [email protected]. Please provide your full name and community, as well as contact information for verification purposes only.